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Friday, January 6, 2012

Coders are celebrities too!

New day, new commercial! Welcome back to the Grove folks. I am your exuberant host, The Onion Knight, and today we are looking at our second commercial in this advertisement fiesta. Last time, we looked at a commercial for Final Fantasy I & II, and since I couldn't find any ads for the first Final Fantasy, we'll be analyzing a somewhat different and unique commercial for the second title.

Final Fantasy II was released in 1988 and this was probably the first TV ad for a Final Fantasy. Keep in mind that the quality of the YouTube video is very low, (perhaps suggesting just how rare and old this ad is), and that the real purpose is to analyze the commercial itself.

Of course, it's all about Final Fantasy II. But what does the commercial tell us about this game? The first thing we see are Square employees coding the game. This is such a strange way of advertising the game, and it might not be an effective strategy marketing idea in today's world. Showing the developers themselves coding and creating the game? Weird, different, and unique is all I can really say about that. Advertising the names of the people who were behind these games was apparently a popular thing to do during this time, however, this method must have been cut short since I haven't see this kind of stuff after Final Fantasy III.

Look at the bottom of the box here. Notice that the creators' names are presented, even the programmer.

So is there anything about this commercial that speaks Final Fantasy? Well, we have the battle theme from the game playing throughout the commercial, and some of Amano's artwork is even shown throughout; the first being Leon, the next Minwu, then Maria, a boss character(whose name I'm forgetting at the moment), and finally Firion. So we've got developers, artwork, and music, but what's my opinion?

Although the commercial is different from anything I've seen, it's anything but exciting and not much information is given in the commercial. Although the developers are shown, we don't know their names or who they are, and nothing is explained about the game at all. All I can gather is that it's for the Famicom, it has artwork, music, and people are making it. That being said, the commercial is still a rare find and something worth noting.

Tomorrow, we'll finish up the last commercial for an 8-bit Final Fantasy, (unless if I come across any more for the Famicom/NES, or any for the Game Boy FFs).